Posts Tagged ‘BioWare’

Dragon Age: Inquisition’s new trailer makes me think that Bioware’s blood and (b)romance fantasy series has noticed the brooding character standing at the other side of the RPG battlefield. The veteran of a thousand deaths stares back, scars criss-crossing every inch of its face, nostrils included, and then rolls backwards out of the door. Dragon Age looks on enviously. It wants to have cool scars a well – it’s the scars, right? Chicks love the scars – and it wants people to notice when it rolls into a room. That, presumably, is why the E3 video caused me to react with a raised eyebrow and a murmur of “Soul-y shit”.

You probably should have called it Faux Dragon Skin, Bioware special edition packaging designers. If you’re going to use it a fake reptile to decorate the supermegaultrodeluxe version of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s box, you might as well go for the ultimate fake reptile.

I remember when Dragon Age trailers were all Marilyn Manson, blood, guts and witchy sex. How things have changed. Or perhaps not. The latest trailer for Dragon Age: Inquisition shows some in-game footage, including a moment of dodge-rolling that made me hanker for Dark Souls II even more than I already am, but it’s mostly bombastic music and high-falutin’ voiceovers. In fact, watch the Origins trailer and this one back to back, switch out ‘Blight’ for ‘Breach’ whenever one or the other occurs, and it doesn’t look all that different. Prettier though. And with less blood and sex.

GDC was jam-packed with brilliant talks, and I missed far too many of them because infinity appointments beckoned. One of the absolute best I *did* see, however, was Mass Effect 4 designer Manveer Heir making an impassioned plea to developers for more diversity in games. He gave a talk equal parts well-reasoned and resolute, arguing not that all games should change their icky ways, but that our industry’s predominate pattern needs to shift away from generic leads and hurtful stereotypes. “I sincerely hope that you are ready for that challenge, because I sure as hell am!” he bellowed before being mobbed by fellow designers. I caught up with Heir afterward to discuss some of his talk’s finer points and how BioWare’s become more sensitive to these issues as time has progressed.

As long as this planet continues to spin, there will be a new Intriguing Kickstarter From Folks Who Used To Work On Major Triple-A Franchise X Of The Day. In this case, that Kickstarter is one for Epoch: Return, and the games that once – at least, in pieces, like so many tinker toys scattering from a bucket – emerged from developer Innate’s collective brain are Mass Effect and Dragon Age. But to be perfectly honest, Epoch doesn’t really bear much family resemblance to its distant BioWarian cousins. It takes place on a colossal, open planet that’s ripe for exploring, and you traverse it by way of high-flying momentum-based leaps that strike me as a midpoint between Mirror’s Edge and Tribes 2. It still looks rather floaty, insubstantial, and, well, early, but I definitely like the idea. Watch below.

Sometimes I take a story because it matters – because I’m all rip-roaring and fired up about change and subtext and gravel-voiced men yammering at each other for reasons. Videogame reasons. Other times, it’s for the headline gag. This one is absolutely the latter. Star Wars: The Old Republic – which I haven’t played since The Old Republic was still a A New-ish (And Not Yet Free-To-Play) Republic – is adding player housing. That’s kind of exciting… I guess? Trailer in the Rancor pit beneath these words.

This year? THIS YEAR? Why was I not told of this? (I was. It’s just that I have the memory of a Leveson Inquiry witness these days). Yes, fantasy RPG sequel Dragon Age Inquistion is due this Autumn/Fall, and much as Bioware have some faith-rebuilding to do after the double-whammy of Dragon Age II and Mass Effect Ending-Gate, I really would like a big, fat, indulgent, glossy RPG on my hard drive right now. Will it be Dragon Age Not-III? The trailer below, which focuses on Frostbite 3 engine-powered environments, suggests I will at least be cooing at its surface.Read the rest of this entry »

Romance in videogames is weird. For one, it’s often handled in ways that range from awkward to downright offensive, and let’s not even start on how deep the uncanny valley suddenly becomes when plasticine mannequin men/women start making goo-goo eyes at each other. But romance, relationships, and sex are fundamental parts of the human experience. They make and break people, peel back layers of personality and reveal us at our most vulnerable. So I’m glad to see that BioWare has no intention of quitting romance, but I sure do wish they did it better.

Anyone who’s watched Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD, and possesses more taste than a toilet roll, will have noticed that it’s a massive stinking turkey of colossal proportions. Somehow making Agent Coulson an unlikeable character – an even more impressive feat since he’s surrounded by utterly hateable characters – it’s a miserable mess of dreary sub-sub-sub-CSI procedural tedium, and mortally embarrassed to be in the Marvel universe. It seems to go out of its way to avoid including anything regarding super heroes, and indeed anything directly relating to familiar Marvel themes, instead opting for that most tiresome trope: evil scientists. (Although without mentioning AIM or Hydra, of course.) Viewers of a recent episode of the somehow not cancelled series might have noticed their strangest decision yet: to use Mass Effect 3 concept art.

Did you know that there are ships in Star Wars? It’s true! I was under the impression that everyone just skywalked everywhere (I mean, why else would anybody name someone that?), but nope, space ships. They fire lasers, too – colorful bouquets of molten, flesh-searing doom. Delightful. It’s like a giant, often fatal rave up there, the raddest of space parties. Don’t believe me? Well then, you’ll just have to watch this trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic: Galactic Starfighter: The Coloning.

Unless of course this is a clever marketing ruse, wherein giving the impression that this half-hour of in-game Dragon Age 3-ing is somehow illicitly-obtained makes everyone frantically watch every second of it. WE ARE BEING TRICKED DON’T WATCH THIS VIDEO WHATEVER YOU DORead the rest of this entry »

Just a snippet about something that was more or less a given, but I think it’s worth stating and knowing for the record that the next Mass Effect will entirely and definitely steer clear of Commander Shephard. The controversial outcomes of Mass Effect 3 do leave some room for ‘what happened next?’ investigations, but the three-game plot had tied itself in so many knots by that point that a totally clean break for the next set of Meffects is only sensible.Read the rest of this entry »

Galactic Starfighter is SO the name of a videogame. Except it’s actually the name of expansion to a videogame, which I suppose is the same thing, albeit a subcategory thereof. Anyway, SWTOR steps into the spacebiff with “12v12 free flight combat”, which involves getting hold of a customisable starfighter and doing pew-pew in various locations around the SWTOR universe. And it looks okay! Or at least not completely terrible*. There are different deals within this expansion depending on whether you are a SWTOR subscriber, or a dirty freeloader, and those can be examined here, with the first wave of space dudes grabbing their space wings on November 1st.Read the rest of this entry »